Seven area artists are showing images of wondrous winter scenes in "Snow and Ice'' at Mass Audubon’s 2,000-acre site in an exhibition that captures the stunning beauty of the year's harshest season.

Organized by exhibit curator Jan Nareski Goba, this rewarding show features work by six photographers and a painter whose distinctive approaches reveal winter's varied facets like travelers exploring new territories.

Despite the chilly subject matter, Goba said their works will beckon visitors to see winter through the eyes of artists who see "familiar scenes we've all seen with new eyes.''

"Sometimes it's chilly. Sometimes it's messy or challenging. Sometimes it's serene,'' she said. "All seven artists used the 'snow and ice' of winter in different ways.''

"Snow and Ice'' portrays winter as both a grueling season that has shaped the New England character and a state-of-mind that has touched the soul of anyone who's had to shovel their driveway or survive the Arctic. Most works are for sale.

Rebecca Skinner photographs elemental winter scenes with the disciplined precision of a poet of Zen haikus. Fred Martins imbues familiar scenes of fields and forests with the warmth of treasured memories.

Like a jeweler squinting into a diamond, Richmond Antinarelli freezes the play of sunlight on snow-covered landscapes making them shimmer and sparkle. Gary Tucker's watercolor scenes combine the exactitude of a photo with the evocative ambiance of a painting.

A Franklin resident, Skinner photographs a "Lone Tree'' in an empty field in such profound isolation it seems more like an abstract study of a dark form against a white background than an actual tree. In "Ice,'' her close-up of the fissures and patterns in a frozen puddle, merges the boundaries between realism and abstraction.

A Franklin resident, Skinner began taking photos with her grandmother's Polaroid at the age of 8 and never stopped. Her eight years working in professional labs in North Carolina shows in the crisp clarity of the images she prints herself.

"Seeing such a variety of professional work made me very picky and want to print my own work,'' she said.

Martins’ artful images reflect his description of himself of seeing his subjects "with a painter’s eye.’’

In "Silence,’’ he photographed a pair of spruce pines at Moose Hill, tinged with the early morning light. Snow drapes their branches on just one side. In his "Orchard Sunrise,’’ Martins has photographed a stand of trees in Bolton, their twisted, snow-laded branches reaching into the cloudy sky as in a haunted forest.

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"Photographing is painting with light. It’s experimenting,’’ said the Winchendon resident who serves as creative director of an advertising agency in Sharon. "These are drive-by shootings, scenes I saw and knew I had to take. I’m always looking.’’

Sheila Palley has looked a little farther than most for her light-suffused photos of glaciers, "Blue Ice Variations – Chile’’ and "Perito Moreno Glacier – Argentina.’’

A Sharon resident, her panoramic images reveal the twin loves of her life, photography and travel to exotic locales.

Holding her Canon 50 D digital camera by hand, she captured both the glacier’s enormity but its delicate luminosity as it subtly refracts sunlight like a massive diamond.

"I do it for the love of it and not to win awards,’’ said Pallay. "If it inspires me, I shoot it.’’

In "Skyfall,’’ which was titled before the release of the similarly named James Bond movie, thick flakes of snow drift earthward between bare tree trunks in a state forest. A patch of red crinkly leaves stands out in a stretch of snowy woods like a banner of resistance in "Defending the Woods.’’

"I’m obsessed with light and color,’’ said Barker Price. "I try to walk a fine line between fantasy and reality.’’

While these seven artists portray winter with very different styles and techniques, many viewers will feel they have seen these sights themselves on their last tramp through the snowy woods.

Spring is just around the corner. After seeing "Snow and Ice,’’ you might want winter to linger longer.

Staff writer Chris Bergeron can be reached at 508-626-4448 or cbergeron@wickedlocal.com. Follow us on Twitter @WickedLocalArts and on Facebook..